They barely made it out.
Frost carried Lyra. Her pulse was steady, but her mind hadn't rebooted right. Signal and Ellian moved like they knew the terrain better than the wind. Whatever the Ashglass had shown them, it hadn't broken them.
But it had changed them.
The relay collapsed behind them. Not a structural failure—something deeper. A kill protocol had activated.
Cain's voice hadn't been a ghost. It was a directive. Stored in machine-code fragments across buried servers. And now that Signal and Ellian had accessed the full memory, the last lock was undone.
Cain's final plan was in motion.
They reached Reda's ship just before the bounty dropships hit the ridge. Maya's sniper shots bought them thirty seconds. Juno laid suppressive fire while Evan loaded Frost into the cabin.
Signal didn't speak. She hadn't since they left the relay.
Ellian finally said, "She's inside now. Full access."
Juno asked, "To what?"
"Everything Cain ever saw," Ellian replied. "And everything she tried to forget."
The engines lit.
They were airborne in under a minute.
Thirty Minutes Later – Altitude: 11,000 feet
Maya piloted. Her face was pale.
"The network's waking up."
Evan leaned over. "What does that mean?"
"I've got signals lighting up on every channel. Private bunkers. Military caches. Sleep protocols. All Cain-era."
Juno frowned. "Contingency spread?"
Ellian nodded. "Cain seeded herself across multiple vaults. Not just Jerusalem."
Lyra stirred beside Frost.
"She... she's going to overwrite anyone touched by her experiments."
Signal finally spoke. Her voice was clearer than before. Firmer.
"She designed the memory protocol as a weapon. Not just against enemies—but against betrayal. If too much of her past was accessed, the system would trigger a reset."
Frost coughed. "Reset of what?"
"Everyone," Signal said. "Anyone built like us."
A silence fell.
Even Maya stopped talking.
Reda's voice crackled over comms. "I've got a ping. Northern Siberia. Massive energy surge. Looks like a server is going live."
Ellian said, "She's starting with Site Zero."
Evan: "Wasn't that destroyed?"
Signal shook her head. "Sealed. Cain lied."
Lyra sat up, eyes wide. "If she reactivates Site Zero, she can push memory code through every neural implant she ever funded."
Juno: "How long do we have?"
Signal looked up.
"Seventeen hours."
The Plan
They'd split again.
Evan, Juno, Maya, and Lyra would head west—toward one of the three known Cain-splice vaults, each containing memory fragments. Destroying those might slow the chain reaction.
Signal and Ellian would head straight to Site Zero.
Frost insisted on going too. "I was there once. I remember enough to matter."
Maya tried to argue.
He cut her off.
"I'm not asking."
Twelve Hours Later – Northern Permafrost
The wind was dead.
Signal, Ellian, and Frost stood before a tower half-sunk into frozen ground. Cain's sigil glowed above the steel gates.
It scanned them.
And opened.
Inside, the cold was worse.
Not temperature. Atmosphere. Signal stumbled once—too much memory flux.
They entered the central chamber.
A machine core pulsed in the dark, tubes stretching into frozen bodies—early versions of the Witness series. Failed iterations. Some still moved.
Frost whispered, "Hell."
Ellian stepped forward. "We're too late."
The core spoke.
Cain's voice again. Not recording—alive.
"I warned you. If you open the past, you forfeit the future."
Signal stepped onto the activation pad.
"You don't get to decide."
Cain laughed.
"Child, I already have."